Can satire con­vert view­ers into vegetarians?

Jon Ron­son isn’t inter­est­ed in your eat­ing habits. As a self-con­fessed ​“fish-and-chip­ocrite” – a fair weath­er veg­gie who’s been known to enjoy the occa­sion­al fish sup­per – the author and some­time screen­writer says he’s ​“nev­er been inter­est­ed in push­ing veg­e­tar­i­an­ism on any­one.” But as the co-writer of Okja, Ron­son hopes that many of us won’t be able to look at a sausage in quite the same way again.

A cud­dly crea­ture-fea­ture with claws – think E.T. for woke kids – from South Kore­an direc­tor Bong Joon-ho, Okja tells the sto­ry of a genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied ​‘super­pig’ and the young girl who goes up against a pow­er­ful multi­na­tion­al to save him.

Will it per­suade peo­ple to recon­sid­er their eat­ing habits? Ron­son would pre­fer us to think of it more sim­ply as an adven­ture sto­ry. ​“When you start talk­ing about themes the dan­ger is that peo­ple start think­ing it’s an issue movie,” he tells LWLies ahead of the film’s recent UK pre­mière at the Edin­burgh Inter­na­tion­al Film Fes­ti­val. ​“Where­as I see Okja more like Spir­it­ed Away; it’s a mag­i­cal fable. Say­ing that, I do think it will turn peo­ple veg­e­tar­i­an – but that was nev­er our intention.”

In a recent piece for the Guardian, the emi­nent British satirist Jonathan Coe claimed that the absur­di­ty of the present moment calls for a satire that goes all the way up to 11 – a ​“rough and ready, car­toon­ish short­cut to the truth,” as he put it. His com­ments were echoed by Til­da Swin­ton, who plays nar­cis­sis­tic CEO Lucy Miran­do in Okja: ​“I think there’s some­thing very pow­er­ful in a time like ours, about a satire broad and extreme enough to go beyond the bounds of our worst fears.”

“The world is run­ning out of food and we’re not talk­ing about it,” Swinton’s Miran­do in a press con­fer­ence announc­ing the super­pig project, sound­ing like a Buz­zfeed head­line gen­er­a­tor come to life. ​“Our super­pigs will not only be big and beau­ti­ful, they will also leave a min­i­mal foot­print on the envi­ron­ment, con­sume less feed, and pro­duce less excre­tions. And most impor­tant­ly, they need to taste fuck­ing good.”

A smil­ing avatar of ​‘car­ing’ cor­po­rate cul­ture to rank with The Simp­sons’ Hank Scor­pio, Swin­ton nonethe­less brings a kind of brit­tle des­per­a­tion to the char­ac­ter, who is obsessed with ​‘detox­i­fy­ing’ the brand her father cre­at­ed. ​“Til­da men­tioned ear­ly on there’s two types of busi­ness per­son,” says Ron­son, who worked close­ly with Swin­ton to devel­op her char­ac­ter. ​“There are the ones who are real­ly unre­con­struct­ed about what they do – you know, like, ​‘We’re busi­ness peo­ple, we do deals and it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter about ethics.’ Then there’s the (Miran­do) type who is more Tony Blair-like, try­ing to put on this social justice‑y, car­ing veneer.”

Ron­son also helped pro­duce the film’s inge­nious teas­er cam­paign, includ­ing a mocked-up ad for Miran­do Corp that sees Swin­ton coo­ing cor­po­rate plat­i­tudes over the sort of plink­ing indie fan­fare that’s become the go-to sound­track for every face­less con­glom­er­ate look­ing to give their brand a folksy makeover. ​“Til­da emailed me with a link to a piece,” Ron­son recalls, ​“which said that adver­tis­ers in Amer­i­ca are no longer inter­est­ed in pleas­ing some mid­dle-Amer­i­can fam­i­ly in Illi­nois, now they want to please mil­len­ni­als in Brook­lyn. And that’s a real change, right? That’s about how cor­po­ra­tions are try­ing to utilise social jus­tice tropes to sell their prod­ucts. So it’s nice to see that this sto­ry that we cre­at­ed a few years ago is get­ting recog­nised as a very real thing.”

But Okja’s satire doesn’t only extend to its virtue-sig­nalling vil­lains. The film also fea­tures a band of apolo­getic ani­mal rights activists, led by Paul Dano, whose high-mind­ed con­ceit gets some of the biggest laughs in the film. Ron­son remem­bers writ­ing one scene where mem­bers of the group enter into a long-wind­ed debate about the ethics of food con­sump­tion, only to have Joon-ho dis­til it to one bril­liant line where an anaemic-look­ing activist refus­es to eat a toma­to because ​“all food pro­duc­tion is exploitative”.

Iron­i­cal­ly, Okja’s self-dep­re­cat­ing streak may be one of its biggest strengths as an argu­ment for the mer­its of meat-avoid­ing. It’s a trait the film shares with anoth­er recent satire, Simon Amstell’s Car­nage, a one-off spe­cial made for the BBC. Shot in a mock­u­men­tary style, Amstell’s film envi­sions an all-veg­an future where peo­ple are appalled to learn about their car­niv­o­rous ances­tors. But, rather than using the premise to wag an accus­ing fin­ger at meat-eaters, Car­nage deliv­ers dis­arm­ing lines like, ​“Why do you keep mak­ing me ejac­u­late?”, as deliv­ered by Joan­na Lum­ley play­ing a talk­ing goat.

“Some­one said it was a sci-fi veg­an com­e­dy and I just thought it sound­ed awful,” Amstell joked dur­ing an on-stage inter­view at London’s BFI back in March. ​“It just had to be fun­ny, because oth­er­wise the whole thing would stink.” The prob­lem, he added, was one of per­cep­tion – when­ev­er you see or hear about veg­an­ism on-screen, it tends to be pre­sent­ed in a preachy fash­ion that rubs peo­ple up the wrong way (and besides, you could argue well-mean­ing docs like Earth­lings and Speciesism risk preach­ing to the con­vert­ed). His answer? To make it ​“fun­ny enough that you didn’t mind when a new bit of info was pre­sent­ed, [like] when we told you that male chicks get gassed or shredded.”

Nor does Okja shrink from pre­sent­ing us with some hard truths, albeit in larg­er-than-life fash­ion. Ron­son stopped eat­ing meat after a trip to an abat­toir brought home the bru­tal real­i­ties of indus­tri­al farm­ing meth­ods, and he reveals that read­ing Bong’s first draft of the script pro­duced a sim­i­lar vis­cer­al response. ​“When I read the scene with the direc­tion, ​‘Inte­ri­or, slaugh­ter­house, night’, I just couldn’t believe it,” he says. ​“For me it’s the key scene in the movie. I thought, ​‘This is gonna be the kind of scene that peo­ple will be talk­ing about for years to come.’ But the ini­tial feed­back Bong got from the stu­dios was, ​‘Are you gonna take that scene out?’ Then he took it to Net­flix and they didn’t have that prob­lem at all.” Delight­ed, the direc­tor invit­ed Ron­son to go over the script and pep­per it with F‑bombs.

Will Okja escape his date with the sausage fac­to­ry? No prizes for guess­ing the out­come there, but in the end, it’s telling that Mija’s devo­tion to her friend out­weighs the activists’ com­mit­ment to the cause – an acknowl­edge­ment that, for the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple, every­day rela­tion­ships count for more than abstract ide­ol­o­gy. It is, per­haps, this under­stand­ing that will make view­ers stare long and hard at their din­ner plates after the cred­its have rolled.